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GM Crops

Tuesday, 30 October 2007

When you pull out your lunch today, think about this. What will our FUTURE food look like? It could be very different if something called 'GM Food' is allowed to happen. Some scientists say this new technology could change our lives and we could have things like lollies that fight tooth decay and fat free hamburgers. But Catherine’s discovered that many people are opposed to the idea and they warn it could cause serious problems.

Presented by Catherine Ellis (episode 30)

CATHERINE ELLIS, REPORTER: Imagine if you could replace this with this.

Well a group of scientists has created bananas with vaccines in them!

If you've got a peanut allergy, never fear, researches are also looking at creating allergy free peanuts.

And if you're allergic to wheat you may soon be able to enjoy cereal without a worry.

The process is called Genetic Modification.

What's that?

Plants and animals are made up of cells that contain thousands of genes, which are like lists of information that make them the way they are.

Scientists are now able to change that info by cutting out bits of genes or adding new ones from different types of animals and plants.

For example, they've done things like, get a daffodil, cut out the gene that makes it yellow and add it to the genetic information of rice, to make golden rice!

And that is genetic modification. It's all done in a lab, before a plant or animal begins to grow.

Lots of farmers and scientists think GM Food is a great idea because they've been able to create crops that need less pesticides and less water!

That means lots more food could be produced, which means our grocery bills would get cheaper and we'd be able to feed the worlds growing population!

The idea of changing plants and animals to suit our needs isn't a new one people have been doing it for thousands of years, but in a very different way - Selective Breeding.

For example if farmers wanted to create corn on the cob that was resistant to a certain fungus - they'd plant a lot of seeds, see which one's survive, take the seeds from them, plant them and eventually you come up with a strain that isn't affected by the fungus. Then you can use its seeds to create lots of fungus free corn.

But this can take years!

Genetic modification on the other hand is very fast.

But it has a lot of people very worried!

They say entering the unknown and messing with the natural world is a big risk - it's hard to predict what could happen.

In fact, people have called GM Food, Frankenfood - like Frankenstein.

CATHERINE ELLIS, REPORTER: The only GM plants that are allowed to be grown and sold in Australia at the moment are BLUE carnations and cotton, to make things like undies.

The cotton has been specially bred to resist pests.

Other countries are growing GM plants. In America they can eat things like genetically modified strawberries, tomatoes and pumpkin.

Australia actually imports some of the GM foods from overseas, like Canola, potatoes, cornmeal, Soya Beans and Sugar beat.

CATHERINE ELLIS, REPORTER: And they can be found in processed foods here like, chocolate, potato chips, biscuits, bread, margarine and mayo. So it is possible you may have eaten GM food before!

So is GM food okay?

Well, people are still very passionate about this and there's still a lot of debate going on, but in the end it will probably be you, the consumer who has the final say.